La aportación educativa de Los museos a La ... - Fundación Typa

the educative contribution of museums to society
commitment to education and openness. Staff members assumed leadership
roles in professional organizations spreading the museum’s impact beyond
Boston and New England. But, children’s museums differ from other museums
because their audience is identified within the very name of the institution,
therefore there is no way that a children’s museum can neglect them. In
fact, Anna Billings Gallup, the innovative director of the Brooklyn Children’s
Museum said it best: “To inspire children with this love for and pride in the
institution [museum], they must feel that it was created for them, and that
in all of its plans, it puts the child first.” 4 In children’s museums, children are
more than occasional visitors, they are central to the organization.
Within traditional museums, museum educators began to design programs
to engage families, not simply students or young people on pre-scheduled
tours. Discovery rooms often adjacent to galleries were filled with objects
to be touched, explored and studied by young people usually in the company
of an adult bringing some of the vitality of children’s museums to museums
of all disciplines. The best discovery rooms offered learning opportunities for
young and old, recognizing that parents often assumed the role of teacher
with their children. The best discovery rooms provided experiences where parent
and child became learners together. Museum evaluators’ representation of
the museum visit as a social experience continued to reinforce this emphasis
on intergenerational interests and the social interactions of the visiting group
(or family).
As the 21 st century opened, museums have become more accessible, both
physically and intellectually. Museum programming has expanded, ranging
from girl scouts sleepovers to intensive curriculum-based experiences for
students in science classes. Computer and video monitors within galleries
allow visitors to go beyond the objects and their labels to explore the broader
contexts, whether historical, artistic, or cultural. Exhibits in museums of all
disciplines offer visitors the opportunity to add their comments or voices to
the exhibition themes. At the most basic level visitors can write in comment
books provided at the end of an exhibit gallery. Or, visitors are invited to add
their perspective to walls within the galleries; places designed to elicit public
involvement in the exhibition’s core interpretation. Museum staff seems fully
engaged in reaching out to visitors and inviting involvement.
Parallel to this institutional impetus is the personal social networking
phenomenon where visitors use the internet to comment, add personal content
to exhibitions or generally make the museum “theirs.” I once suggested to
a colleague how interesting it would be to provide young visitors with a video
camera to record their impressions of the museum; he laughed and said that
visitors are already doing just that with cell phones and internet connections.
It’s not unusual for museums to be incorporated into a visitor’s Facebook page
as an electronic diary entry or as a more sophisticated element of storytelling
or personal interpretation of museum objects and the museum experience.
4 Gallup, quoted in Museums in Motion, Second Edition, p. 167.
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